Again, Nicias, in his expenses, was of a more public
spirit than Crassus, priding himself much on the dedication of
gifts in temples, on presiding at gymnastic games, and
furnishing choruses for the plays, and adorning processions,
while the expenses of Crassus, in feasting and afterwards
providing food for so many myriads of people, were much greater
than all that Nicias possessed as well as spent, put together.
So that one might wonder at anyone's failing to see that vice
is a certain inconsistency and incongruity of habit, after such
an example of money dishonorably obtained, and wastefully
lavished away.

¶ Against Crassus it must also be laid that he was inconstant and
unfaithful, which cannot be said of Nicias.

¶ The chief fault of Nicias --a grievous one-- was his cowardliness
and unwillingness to stand up to the unprincipled men who, rising to
power in the vacuum he allowed, did so much harm to Athens.

But as Crassus was to be
blamed for his violent and arbitrary courses, so is Nicias no
less to be blamed for his timorousness and meanness of spirit,
which made him submit and give in to the basest people, whereas
in this respect Crassus showed himself lofty spirited and
magnanimous, who having to do not with such as Cleon or
Hyperbolus, but with the splendid acts of Caesar and the three
triumphs of Pompey, would not stoop, but bravely bore up against
their joint interests, and in obtaining the office of censor,
surpassed even Pompey himself For a statesman ought not to
regard how invidious the thing is, but how noble, and by his
greatness to overpower envy; but if he will be always aiming at
security and quiet, and dread Alcibiades upon the hustings, and
the Lacedaemonians at Pylos, and Perdiccas in Thrace, there is
room and opportunity enough for retirement, and he may sit out
of the noise of business, and weave himself, as one of the
sophists says, his triumphal garland of inactivity. His desire
of peace, indeed, and of finishing the war, was a divine and
truly Grecian ambition, nor in this respect would Crassus
deserve to be compared to him, though he had enlarged the Roman
empire to the Caspian Sea or the Indian Ocean.

¶ However blame-worthy Nicias was in preferring his own comforts before
the safety of his city, we must give him this: when called on
to lead, even in a war he disapproved, he went and did the best he knew.

¶ We may also consider how bad luck --illness and rivals in Athens--
sore hindered Nicias who was, in
many ways an able commander; in contrast to Crassus who blundered so
no amount of good luck could extricate him from his poor judgment.